Sufjan Stevens | Carrie & Lowell
This week’s Sunday morning offering is Sufjan Steven’s new album Carrie & Lowell. You’re probably already depressed because of some combination of bad decisions made last night and the pending doom and boredom of another Monday approaching so I’m here to pile it on. While you can always stop drinking too much or quit your meaningless job, this is an extremely sad folk album about the one real depressing thing that you can’t avoid: death. The titular characters refer to Steven’s mother Carrie who recently passed due to cancer and his stepfather Lowell Brams (who is not only alive and well but helps run a record label with Sufjan). While losing a parent is always tough to deal with, Steven’s relationship with his mother is more complicated than the usual complicated mother-child relationship due elements of abandonment, schizophrenia, depression, religious cults, and drug and alcohol abuse. It makes for a compelling and at times uncomfortably intimate record.
When Stevens sings When we were 3, maybe 4, she left us at that video store he is telling us his true,sad recollections from his past. While later in “Should Have Known Better” he speaks as his more recent self dealing with regret: I should have known better/Nothing can be changed/The past is still the past/the bridge to nowhere/I should have wrote a letter/explaining what I feel/that empty feeling. Only parents can fuck us up bad enough that they treat us like crap and WE regret the things WE didn’t do before they pass. Stevens admitted in several interviews that he forgave his mother for abandoning him and his siblings to deal with her demons, and maintained an intermittent relationship with her during sporadic bouts of sobriety and mental stability. Still, there are things that stay with you forever (both good and bad) and its obvious that if everything was simply forgotten Carrie & Lowell wouldn’t exist at all.
The album has its subtle moments of sadness like the stories you can relate you personally as well the more obvious examples like the outro to “Fourth of July” (We’re all gonna die, We’re all gonna die…) or the beginning to “The Only Thing”: The only thing that keeps me from driving this car/half light jackknife/ into the canyon at night. Musically Carrie & Lowell represents the softer and musically beautiful side of Sufjan; not the ADD electronica enthusiast found on Enjoy Your Rabbit or The Age of Adz (not including opening track “Futile Devices” which would actually be a pretty good comparable). But if your favorite songs from Illinois were “John Wayne Gacy Jr” and “Casimir Pulaski Day” or your favorite from Michigan was “For the Widows in Paradise, For the Fatherless in Ypsilanti” then these songs are probably for you. And thankfully the song titles are way easier to remember. If you’ve never listened to Sufjan Stevens at all but you love Elliot Smith, this album is for you too. There is no jazz time signatures, distorted rock jams, or elaborate orchestral instrumentation on Carrie & Lowell. Just eleven stripped down indie-folk songs that won’t make you dance, but should definitely make you feel something.
Bake
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[…] Sufjan Stevens| Carrie & Lowell – The delicate folks songs are back and the bizarre electronica completely erased on this Sufjan […]